


Tony Stark's Tower for Teenage Superheroes

by singingwithoutwords



Series: Super-powered Strays series [1]
Category: The Avengers - Ambiguous Fandom
Genre: Alternate Universe, And He's Really Good At It, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Teen Avengers, tony is everyone's dad
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-13
Updated: 2016-07-13
Packaged: 2018-07-23 19:57:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,904
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7477794
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/singingwithoutwords/pseuds/singingwithoutwords
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Only Tony Stark could accidentally amass a collection of super-powered teenagers hellbent on saving the world.  At least they've got him and each other.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Tony Stark's Tower for Teenage Superheroes

**Author's Note:**

> Anon on tumblr offered to pay me to write this. It's not my fault.

It started with Jan.  Tony had known the van Dynes most of his life and always adored their tiny daughter who talked fashion like an expert at five and could keep up with kids twice her age in any lab; after the accident, it only made sense for Tony to take her in.  He did legally adopt her, but after a long and serious discussion, the then-nine-year-old had elected to keep her surname as it was.

Despite all his worries, fatherhood came easily to Tony, and he loved it.  So when Jan came home with a scrawny, underfed boy who claimed to be a year older than her and said she’d found him stealing from the school cafeteria, Tony didn’t hesitate nearly as long as he should have before letting him stay.

Scott wasn’t technically homeless, a quick background check told him, but Scott had made it clear he preferred the streets.  That adoption was trickier, but the Stark name (and fortune) smoothed the way considerably.

Jan was ten when her powers manifested.  Tony was torn between fascination and terror, the scientist and the father in him at war with each other.  He knew his daughter, and he knew that as soon as she could, she’d be out there using her abilities for the greater good.  He wouldn’t be able to stop her, so he helped her instead.  He programmed a new AI to handle training and keep track of her and built her a high-tech supersuit that worked with her to keep her at least a little safe.  Scott, as overprotective of Jan as any big brother could be, managed to convince Tony to make him a suit, too, one that mimicked Jan’s powers and let him cover her back.

The Wasp and Ant-Man (Scott was eleven, he was so nowhere near a man, but Tony would never point that out to his face) had been making headlines for a little over a week when Steve broke Tony’s car.  Literally.  The kid ran headlong into it and left a dent the size of an elephant, halfway crushed the engine, then took off running again with a hurried apology.  The kid following him dented the dent and didn’t bother saying sorry.

With Jarvis and Friday both searching, it wasn’t hard to follow the duo’s trail of destruction through the city, or to spot the people chasing them.  Tony didn’t care who the kids were or what they’d done, he did not approve of grown-ass men with semi-automatics chasing them.

They went to ground in an empty warehouse which _just happened_ to be one Tony bought about ten seconds after they broke into it at twice its market listing.  He took Jan and Scott with him to ‘inspect’ it, and ‘just happened’ to find two scared shitless kids hiding in the back office.

Big and Blond was named Steve, Dark and Broody went by Bucky and was missing an arm.  After a lot of careful coaxing and five pizzas delivered to the warehouse door, they finally spilled their story: Steve’s mom had died a couple years ago, Bucky’s parents had died a couple years before that, and the person claiming to be a social worker had actually been in the employ of some sort of underground mad scientists’ club called Hydra.  The two had been used as lab rats, eventually giving them super strength, speed healing, and a massive grudge against their captors (Steve more so in everything but the grudge).  They’d basically punched their way out and only been on the run a few hours before they’d literally run into Tony’s car.

So of course Tony had to adopt them, too.

Steven Grant Rogers-Stark was _eleven_ under all that muscle, and even more of an idealist than Jan- as soon as he found out about the heroing, he wanted in.  James Buchanan “Bucky” Barnes-Stark was thirteen and would follow Steve to the ends of the earth with only mild complaining, so of course he was in, too.

(They both also ate enough to fuel an entire army.  It was a good thing Tony was a billionaire.)

Natasha invited herself to join Tony’s baby supersquad.  She showed up in the Tower beat all to hell, with a broken arm and a bullet wound in the matching leg, and couldn’t have been older than fourteen.  She very calmly laid out a horror story that surpassed Bucky and Steve’s, about an organization called the Red Room that churned out little girl assassins like candy.  She’d been hired out to kill Tony.  She’d seen the kids sneaking back in after a full night of fighting crime, killed her handler, and broken in to throw herself on Tony’s mercy- even if he killed her, he’d be kinder about it than the Red Room, and it would be better than going back.

Tale told, she stood there dripping blood on the polished marble, barely moving to breathe, and waited.

Jan, still in her Wasp costume, quietly mentioned that she’d always wanted a sister, and even if Tony had been entertaining turning Natasha away he couldn’t now.

So Jan got her older sister, and once Natasha’s wounds healed everybody got hand-to-hand lessons.  It took Natasha much longer than the others to start feeling comfortable in the Tower, but Tony didn’t blame her considering her background.

The next addition was a three-for-one deal and started with another break-in.  This time a dirty kid with arms to rival Steve’s stealthed his way into Tony’s office early one morning and was waiting for him when he showed up to get some work done.

The kid didn’t introduce himself.  He didn’t have much in the way of manners, but he was obviously doing his best.  Tony had breakfast sent up, watched his guest inhale donuts for five minutes, and pretended not to notice that every other donut disappeared inside the kid’s threadbare jacket.

After he’d eaten his fill, the kid confessed he’d found a couple kids that needed help.  Special help.  They were special kids, he said, the kind of special that scared normal people.  Tony managed to drag out that the kids in question (eight-year-old twins) had, like Steve and Bucky, escaped from a Hydra facility.  That this kid had been spying on them since Natasha came in from the cold.  That he didn’t really trust Tony, but he was willing to chance it if it meant the twins might be safe.

Tony brought Steve and Jan to pick them up and waited in the car.  It took four hours to convince them it wasn’t a trap, but they eventually gave in.  They and their angry shadow holed up in the spare room on Steve and Bucky’s floor, and that was how Wanda and Pietro Maximoff and Clint Barton joined the Stark family.

James “Rhodey” Rhodes didn’t actually need to join the Stark family.  He had a perfectly good family of his own, completely with house and loving parents.  He was interning at SI with an eye toward MIT and the military once he was old enough, and became an honorary member of the squad after making creative use of a lunch tray and a stool to protect an injured Scott from the villain of the week long enough for the rest of the little heroes to get there.  How he convinced his parents to let him take up crime fighting as an after school activity would forever remain a mystery to Tony, but he did it: their only condition was that he train with and follow the same protocols as Tony’s horde, and that everything be reported to them.

Friday really liked Roberta Rhodes.  He might have created a monster by introducing them.  The United States legal system would never fully recover. (That was probably a good thing.)

Thor Bohrson was also still comfortably parented, but was in possession of a magical hammer that he had only the shakiest control over.  He turned up in the Tower lobby with a note from his mother.  It was adorable.  Tony knew the Bohrsons casually and - like anyone else who’d ever met her - was loathe to disappoint Frigga, so Thor joined up as well.

Virginia “Pepper” Potts didn’t want to be a crime-fighter.  She’d gotten caught in the crossfire of a major throw-down between the kiddos and some nasty invaders from outer space, and had wound up playing field medic to half of them before it was over, armed with a first aid kit and more nerve than most armies.  After the fighting was over and the dust had started to settle, she’d marched home with the kids and given Tony an earful about the whole thing.  She obviously hadn’t expected an immediate offer for an official position as team medic, but she’d taken it, along with the special suit Tony made her, and Rescue’s red and silver armor became a fixture in battle.

Bruce Banner was an emancipated sixteen-year-old making impressive waves in the scientific community when a lab accident landed him with a big, green, angry alter ego.  The experiment had drawn a lot of interest that worried Tony deeply, so he might maybe have technically kidnapped Bruce as soon as he was safe to be moved.  Not that Bruce minded once he realized where he was.  He was scared silly of what he could do when he lost control, but if any household in the world could handle him, it was this one.  It took surprisingly little convincing to get him to hang around.  He was a member of the team on paper but preferred to avoid fighting, and mainly contributed by joining Tony in the lab.

Last came Peter Parker, aka Spider-Man (he was twelve, why did preteens keep calling themselves ‘man’?), brought in with a badly scored arm and a dislocated wrist by Scott.  He lived with his aunt, who didn’t know about the whole costumed crime-fighter thing, and was as smart as Bruce.  Tony agreed not to spill the beans on the condition Peter came to them whenever he was hurt, no matter how bad he didn’t think it was, and check in with one of the others regularly.  He wasn’t going to out the kid unless he had to, but damned if he was going to not help in any way he could.

Everyone knew about Tony Stark’s large collection of children, of course, though few people suspected any connection with the influx of superheroes whose voices hadn’t broken yet.  The seedier gossip rags had all sorts of nasty things to say, but as the years passed most gave it up.  It was obvious that Tony loved each and every kid in the purest, most fatherly way possible, and that they loved him just as much.  Almost nobody accused the adoptions of being publicity stunts anymore, and everybody knew that trying to corner one of the kids was not going to end well for the corner-er.

The maid service came twice a day every day and still couldn’t keep up with the mess.  Tony spent as much time trying to keep them all alive in the field as he did on his company.  Sibling banter had a distressing habit of resulting in broken walls.  He was seriously considering making a third AI to help the two he already had handle everything.

He loved every moment of it, and would not have traded one second for anything in the world.

**Author's Note:**

> Let's be real here, there will absolutely be more of this, but I am going to make a concerted effort to keep it all to oneshots because frankly I've got enough epics in the works as it is.
> 
> And yes, **you absolutely can give me prompts for this 'verse**.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Nick Fury's Home for Teenage Superheroes](https://archiveofourown.org/works/11908863) by [Quillium](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Quillium/pseuds/Quillium)




End file.
